


Strategies

by tincturesofamusement (orphan_account)



Series: Dreamer Errant [4]
Category: The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon
Genre: Dreamwalking, Emim, Fight scenes are more fun than I expected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/tincturesofamusement
Summary: -Paige, as per usual, doesn't think through a few of her ideas (but they end up successful), and in fact doesn't think through the rest of her ideas either (and they end up knocking her unconscious).
Relationships: Paige Mahoney/Warden | Arcturus Mesarthim
Series: Dreamer Errant [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708393
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Strategies

The winter sun slid behind buildings. I lifted my wrist automatically before remembering that I didn’t have a watch. Every minute since I’d nudged at the golden cord, hoping Warden would find me soon enough, seemed to linger longer than its due.  
  
A restaurant across the street from the shadowed corner where I stood was packed with diners. A face near the window, enveloped in bright green hair, looked out idly and caught my eye.  
  
I sighed and turned away only to find myself face-to-face with Warden, eyes aglow. I cursed, forcing myself to relax before I tried to slice through his sunlit zone. “How long have you been standing there?”  
  
“Only a moment,” he said. “Could you not sense my dreamscape?”  
  
I could have if I’d been paying attention. I shrugged. “I found the cinema.”  
  
“And why is it significant?”  
  
“There’s a deserted cold spot in the middle of it,” I said.  
  
His eyes burned. “You have seen no Emite?”  
  
I shook my head.  
  
After a moment, he nodded and held out a hand, gesturing for me to lead the way.  
  
The cinema was only a few blocks from our rendezvous point, but Warden stayed a distance behind me on the way. I checked for dreamscapes inside the building before drawing the key from my pocket and sidling inside. Warden followed a moment later, his eyes going straight to the shattered ice circle in the corner. While he knelt to examine it, I retreated to the far side of the room, where the air was marginally milder. Cold spots repelled spirits, humans, and clearly, heat.  
  
“When did you find this, Paige?” he said.  
  
“A few hours ago.” I leaned stiffly against one of the metal shelves. “The Emite will have to come back here soon, right?”  
  
“Unless it finds another gateway to the Netherworld, yes.”  
  
“ _Another_ one? Is that likely?”  
  
He stood, eyes traversing the strange brass fixtures and the decorated pillars set in the floor. “We must hope not,” he murmured.  
  
I crossed my arms as he stepped past the fixtures. “Don’t even think about telling me to leave you alone here.”  
  
From his quick, almost involuntary glance at me, I gathered that that was exactly what he’d been intending to do. “How would you kill an Emite, then, Paige?”  
  
“Salt?”  
  
“Good. Anything else?”  
  
I’d never killed an Emite before, nor seen one killed. My knowledge of them was mostly centered on the injuries left on those who tried. “Well, knives would probably help.”  
  
I glimpsed a spark in his eyes. “Did you never consider diplomacy? Negotiation, perhaps?”  
  
“As a strategy for avoiding near-mortal injury by Emim?” I said lightly. “I don’t know, did you?”  
  
He bowed to me. “Touché.”  
  
There was a soft shaking sound as he withdrew something from his pocket: two wooden discs the size of his palm, apparently sealed together. He tossed it to me. A clasp on the side released one of the discs, revealing a perforated surface through which grains of salt were visible. “That can be used as a weapon when thrust towards an Emite. Use it only to defend one or both of us,” he said.  
  
I clamped the discs shut again and dropped them into my pocket. “How many Emim have you killed, Warden?” I said.  
  
“Not enough,” was his only reply.  
  
We didn’t speak for a few minutes. I sat back against the wall, cross-legged, and closed my eyes. Red flowers, the color of new blood, ranged around me in place of darkness. I breathed in and out, keeping my focus in my body.  
  
When I let my eyes drift open, Warden was standing by the window, looking at me. “You seek to remind yourself of your dreamscape,” he said.  
  
“Something like that,” I said. “It’s not like anything about it has changed, though.”  
  
“Ever?”  
  
I’d never told him that my dreamscape - the place where I felt safest - was now full of poppy anemones. Somehow, I didn’t think now was the right time to bring it up. “Just since before the Archon.”  
  
He held my gaze for a moment, curiosity lighting his eyes, then nodded. I returned to my dreamscape, only to see the meadow wilt as if under a blight. My eyes flew open. “Warden!”  
  
Almost before I spoke, he was moving - and not a moment too soon. The window shattered, broken glass flying through the room ahead of the buzzing shadow that had sent it. I forced myself up off the floor with difficulty as Warden drew his knife. He faced the creature, almost seeming to make eye contact with it despite the fact that nothing about it reflected light. As he stepped backward, the Emite followed him, its corrupted influence fading from my aura.  
  
Warden backed up until he was almost against the shelves on the opposite side of the room, then latched onto the racks with his hands and climbed six feet up backwards with inhuman coordination. Just when the Emite had reached the shelves, he gripped his knife and jumped over it to the floor, pulling the knife through its body as he fell. The Emite screamed and twisted to find him again, but Warden was already halfway across the room. When he reached me, he grasped me at the waist and lifted me halfway up the nearest shelf. I scaled the remainder as fast as I could.  
  
“Stay there as long as you can, dreamer. It will not be able to climb the shelves,” he said.  
  
“How do you know -” I quieted suddenly. The Emite was almost upon us again, leaving a trail of viscous liquid behind it. My fingers scraped at the clasp on the salt discs. Warden looked up at me quickly, his eyes dark, and I tore the protective disc away to shower the Emite with the white grains. A grotesque wail filled the room as it retreated. Warden walked through the pillars to the center of the room.  
  
The Emite was still facing me - or, at least, it didn’t appear to have turned since it had rushed toward us. The smell and sense of decay reached me, almost overpowering me. Across the room, Warden lifted his knife and met my gaze for an instant before he sent it racing through the air. The knife disappeared into the Emite’s darkness, but the injury didn’t appear to slow it down. The creature pivoted and shuffled back towards Warden, who was now weaponless.  
  
Warden looked down for a moment as he stepped backwards over the fixtures and pressed his back to a pillar. The Emite took no notice of the spikes in the floor, advancing toward him at a worrying speed. At the last moment, Warden spun around to the other side of the pillar. The Emite either couldn’t see the pillar or couldn’t stop in time. It crashed straight into the column and bounced off slightly, the buzzing sound increasing in volume.  
  
There was a loud splintering sound. The wooden pillar was meant for decoration, not violent attacks from supernatural nightmares. Warden half-turned to look, but the Emite had already noticed its advantage. It rammed into the pillar again, splitting the wood into pieces and knocking Warden flying across the jumble of brass spikes. He cried out in Gloss, and the sound jarred me to action. I jumped from the top shelf, the salt disc tossing grains in the air, and sprinted towards them.  
  
My hands started shaking once I was close to the Emite. Its presence constricted my throat and oppressed my aura. I’d never thought to ask if Emim could actually drain voyants’ aura the way Rephaim could; the question would have to wait, as the only Rephaite available to ask was struggling to rise past half a dozen cuts and bruises.  
  
I tried to push the salt at the Emite, but my hand only jerked feebly. It was so hard to move, to think, to breathe. Dazed, I reached into my pocket for a gun, but all my scrabbling fingers found was the key to the cinema. Not exactly the ideal weapon.  
  
The Emite appeared to come to a decision about which one of us to mutilate first and staggered toward me. I gritted my teeth and slammed the key into the thin wooden surface of the disc, which warped and ruptured under the stroke. The sight - or at least sense - of the salt seemed to give the Emite pause, but I had underestimated its capabilities. It lunged to my side, and I felt something sharp carve my arm as I fell away from the creature. The key dropped from my hand, although I had fortunately hit the floor well clear of the fixtures. I dragged my uninjured arm across my body and picked up the key, trailing it through the blood in my stupor. The Emite drew closer, and as it leaned towards me, I splayed the key into the disc full of salt, coating it in white over red.  
  
Behind the Emite, Warden had gotten to his feet again. The golden cord was shaking. He could recover quickly from injuries, but he would be too weak to defeat the Emite now. I forced my chin up, looking into the distorted shadow in front of me, and stabbed the key straight into its middle.  
  
I was too faint to deliver much strength to the blow, but the Emite shrieked horribly and tottered backward. Warden lifted one of the halves of the broken pillar and dropped it on the Emite, which collapsed to the floor and quieted. He ignored it and came straight to my side.  
  
“Warden, is that going to be...” I wanted to ask if it was dead, but speaking was too difficult. Warden lifted me gently and set me back against the wall, farther from the Emite. I breathed a little easier, but there was something wrong. As his fingers brushed my arm, I realized that he was still bleeding. Greenish ectoplasm seeped from a gash on his wrist where he’d tried to break his fall.  
  
Ectoplasm: the substance that brought voyants closer to the aether. My eyes widened as my spirit lifted almost out of my dreamscape. I tried to open my mouth, to tell him that he had to leave me, but the words echoed unheard into my dreamscape.  
  
“Paige?” He must have realized what was happening to me, because he growled slightly and switched to Gloss. The golden cord yanked at my spirit, but it wasn’t enough to fight the liquid aether that was still just inches from my skin, pulling me away.  
  
Warden’s hand came to my face, tracing my cheekbones. An idea - a fleeting, foolish guess - materialized in my mind, sprung from memories of gilded skin and flames on flowers. I bit my tongue, hoping the pain would buy me a few seconds, and whispered to him.  
  
“Kiss me.”  
  
“What?” Had I not been so preoccupied, I would have found it interesting that Rephaim could show surprise. His face grew solemn, his eyes suddenly blazing. He said something else, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. The aether was summoning me, pulling at my spirit, pushing my eyes closed.  
  
And then his lips brushed against me. I opened my eyes, just slightly. Warden moved his hand to my curls, pushing my hair from my face, and pressed his mouth to mine. His touch set fires in my mind, making me forget the rest of the world. For just a   
moment, the pressure on my spirit seemed to relent. I raised my chin, kissed him back, and he tilted his head to let me. There was nothing else to think of besides the increasingly desperate pull of our lips, the feel of his skin.  
  
But of course, just because you don’t think of danger doesn’t mean you’re safe.  
  
My spirit, buoyed by the effects of the ectoplasm, darted away from my sunlit zone and through the fields of poppy anemone - fields that were now red with flames. The heat scorched my skin. I only had time to wonder if my breathing reflex would still work from my twilight zone before all the red dimmed to black and I lost consciousness.  
  
_______

There was a faint yellow stain in the corner of the ceiling. I hadn’t noticed it before. I shifted, drawing my hand up my torso to push the covers back.  
  
Warden was sitting at the table, not looking at me. With a jolt, I remembered the events of the previous night. A dozen more questions raced through my mind. I sat up and lifted my arm to look at the bite. The cut was still there, but it had been treated and cleaned. I remembered Warden saying that a healthy human body could fight Emite infection without any medicine.  
  
So my body would be all right. That left my mind.  
  
Cautiously, I looked into my dreamscape. The poppies swayed slightly in a nonexistent breeze. I raised my dream-form’s hands in front of me. They were a little paler than my real skin, but they looked unhurt. I tried to touch my face, to feel for any injury, but my sense of touch didn’t work as well within my dreamscape. As far as I could tell, I hadn’t been affected by diving through a wall of fire.  
  
I opened my eyes in the real world and looked toward the window. The half-light of dawn gave the room some illumination. I must have just slept through the night.  
  
Warden had surely noticed that I was awake, but he still ignored me. I cleared my throat and said, “Are you okay?”  
  
“I recovered from my injuries, as they were not dealt by the Emite. Thank you.”  
  
“And the Emite itself?”  
  
“Dead. I was able to extract some of its blood, which may prove useful in future.”  
  
I rose gingerly and joined him at the table.  
  
“My apologies for the absence of food. I did not know when you would wake up,” he said.  
  
I raised an eyebrow. “What time is it?”  
  
“Shortly after five o’clock in the evening.”  
  
“In the _evening_?” I stood, knocking the chair back, and went to the window. The sun was on the wrong side for dawn. I cursed under my breath.  
  
“You have been comatose for the last twenty hours,” he said.  
  
The thought scared me. Six hours of sleep was all I ever needed. I raised my hands to my cheeks again, trying to feel for the damage I still assumed had been done to my dream-form.  
  
“Well,” I said aloud, “it’s nice that we’re not dead.”  
  
“Quite.” Warden still appeared fascinated by the opposite wall. “I hope, Paige, that you do not anticipate needing my... help again.”  
  
“Your help.”  
  
“You used me to knock yourself out for the better part of a day.”  
  
“So you’re not going to kiss me again.” There was a pause. “You gave me your _help_ in the alley, too. You kept me in my dreamscape.”  
  
"I guessed as much." Warden's expression was hard, unforgiving, in a way I hadn't seen it for a while. Rephaim didn't deign to express dislike, but they could certainly communicate utter disdain of us simple mortals. "I refuse to do so again, Paige."  
  
"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that would happen."  
  
"No?" he said. "What exactly was your planned outcome, then?"  
  
“I -” I hadn’t exactly drawn schematics of the situation. “I don’t know. I was just scared.”  
  
He waited long enough to leave no doubt of what he thought of that answer before replying tightly, “I see.”  
  
A splinter of wood on the windowsill bent downward, grudgingly, as I pushed at it. The conversation brought back memories of when we had kissed or slept pressed against each other before. Before I had told him we couldn’t keep this balancing act going anymore, that the risk of the Ranthen discovering us was too dangerous.  
  
Ranthen or not, I much preferred his embrace to the cold fury I was offered now. The splinter snapped off and tumbled from the sill, dropping inaudibly to the carpet. When I looked up, our gazes met.  
  
“Paige,” Warden said, “I cannot stop you from causing yourself harm. I do not and have never controlled your decisions.” Flames still glinted in his eyes. “But you do not have the right to command, nor ever again to expect, my complicity.”  
  
I hardly knew what he was saying. Did he think I’d engineered my gift to be dysfunctional on purpose? “What if the alternative involves me dying because I get stuck in the aether for the rest of forever?”  
  
“Even so.”  
  
Before I could stop myself, I snapped, “Do you really hate kissing me that much?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
His answer was so unexpected that it took me several seconds to reconcile it with the question.  
  
“Right,” I said, my voice too soft for a human to hear from across the room. He was silent. I felt heat rise to my cheeks and behind my eyes, each heartbeat seeming to slam through my flesh. My fingers sought the distraction of the splinter on the sill again, but all I got was a slit of pain and a bead of blood. I closed my fist around it. “Was there anything else?”  
  
In response, he stood and put on his jacket, then turned to the door.  
  
“Warden -” I broke off and swallowed to steady my voice. I didn’t want him to leave like this, not after twenty hours of waiting to talk to me. But every question or statement that came to my mind seemed to be pushed aside by his last answer. _I don’t want you. I never did._  
  
That wasn’t true. He’d asked me to believe before that it wasn’t true. I had made the decision to trust that it wasn’t true. “When was the last time you lied to me?”  
  
His eyes lost their light, taking on the color of a forest at sunset. When he spoke, the words were rough against his throat. “When do you think?”  
  
I closed my eyes. The door shut quietly and locked.

**Author's Note:**

> In a surprising but welcome turn of events, I wrote more than I expected to, so there will be one more update (hopefully within a few weeks). Thanks for reading this one!


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